Personally, I think having someone come over to the house is better than the vet. It’s not like at vet boarding, they interact with the animals more than a few times a day. Most of the time, they are just locked up, in unfamiliar territory, with stressed out other animals. To my dog, I know between the two, home environment would would be preferable - he would be stressed out in a place like like that.
^^^I agree with @acollegestudent.
As I sometimes write letting the reader fill in the blanks, I meant ask the Vet for home references. Sorry, I tend to do this ever since I learned to write cryptic notes.
For a trip this spring we are paying a friend of my D’s $500 for two weeks housesitting/petsitting . In fact a grad school friend of D’s who has stayed with us when she has a gig in LA. The amount we are paying her just covers a round trip ticket to get her here, but she looks at it as a free vacation in Southern California. She loves our pup and our house. It’s a win for both parties.
In asking your vet for home references, don’t be surprised if some of the techs that work in the office aren’t recommended. I know I’ve gotten recommendations for employees at our vet’s office, as well as staff at the groomer’s place. Those are excellent places to get referrals from because you know these people are capable of handling any emergency situation that might come up while you’re gone… such as (and thankfully we’ve never had to deal with this) a dog who refuses to eat when left in the care of others.
Ha! My dogs will eat anything that isn’t nailed down. Did I mention the time they took a 5-pound bag of flour off the counter, dragged it through the doggie door, and ate it in the back yard? Yech.
We just have cats, so have used friends and older teens to drop in daily. My own older teens/college students have lived in other people’s houses to care for dogs. I know you said you live in a small town, and think this is too big a task for just friends, but if you could pay an older teen or young adult to live in your house, would that work? Do vet them. My kids have only done it for friends, not strangers. I guess other sources of pet sitters would be churches, colleges, med schools, vet schools. It was challenging when my kids did it; the dogs were very old (needed medicine) or very young (needed lots of exercise). The good part of it was that my kids were old enough to want to be less monitored by me, so they saw this as independence (even though they had to go home every few hours to let the dogs out!).
I don’t know if we have any commercial services that pet sit in your home here, and I live in a large urban area. I like the idea of boarding the dog and letting the car stay at home. The dog will need more intensive care and socializing. If he could be at a place where he gets walked and has someone to hang out with he will be happier.